


The Battle Hymn of the Republic

by ishafel



Category: House of Cards (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A portrait of a marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Battle Hymn of the Republic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taliahale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taliahale/gifts).



For most of his life anger has been the defining fact of Frank Underwood's life: he is an angry child, growing up poor and white and Southern, half-educated in the best South Carolina tradition. He is angry as a cadet at the Sentinel, destined to be a soldier in a country that is not and will not be at war in time to use the things he learns, angry at the stupidity of marching nowhere and firing at nothing. He learns, slowly, to cover the anger with charm, and he parlays it into a career in politics, but under the slow drawl and the too-long handshakes, behind the crooked smile and the crookeder deals, the same rage burns.

And then he meets Claire. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, with none of the mannered sweetness to which he is accustomed. He watches her endless legs, her wide mouth and direct eyes under the short blonde hair, and he thinks about fucking her on the couch in his shabby campaign headquarters in Columbia. It takes him longer to come to admire her brutal honesty, the swagger in her walk, the strength of her handshake.

It takes him longer still to get her into bed. She's even better out of her clothes. There aren't many curves, but what there is is perfect. He isn't gentle with her; he doesn't have to be. She wants her breasts bitten, her wrists bruised. “I thought you were a dyke,” he says, laughing, while she digs through her purse for her cigarettes.

“I thought you were a jackass,” she says, and he leans in with the lighter. “Or a gentleman and a Southerner, which amounts to the same thing.”

It takes him a long time to realize she's just as angry as he is: angry at her father who wanted a son and not a daughter, at her mother who wanted someone else entirely. Angry at the world, which is cruel and terrible, at the men who have betrayed her, at the thousand injustices she hasn't been able to right. Unlike him she has learned to make a virtue of it, of the clean strong rage of a cavalier. 

This is why he falls in love with her, and not for the scratches she leaves on his back, the way she insists on what she wants in bed. As beautiful as she is, she isn't really his type. She's made armor of her damage, hard and brittle. He can hurt her but she won't let him see the bleeding wounds he makes.

He loves her but he wants someone else, someone vulnerable and breakable, someone who needs him. And she loves him and she wants someone else, too: someone sensitive and caring and kind, someone she can use and discard as he will not let her use him. She wants someone who doesn't understand her and won't dare to try.

This is their marriage. They share a house, a life, a late night cigarette, a dream. They want the same things, and they are willing to break rules to get them. Frank has never believed that rules apply to him and Claire has never believed that consequences outweigh victories. 

Sometimes they fuck, and it's like it was that first time, like there's no one else in the world. Sometimes Frank tells her about the women he's with, damaged, pretty women with cruel fathers and absent mothers, who beg to be degraded and mistreated, who keep calling him afterward and leaving tearful messages. Less often she talks about her boyfriends, handsome and virtuous and clever: the artist, the doctor, the poet, the cowboy, who make love to her as if they are worshipping her, and who are never cruel no matter how much she wants them to be.

Sometimes they are even happy. Frank wants power, more than anything. Claire wants to be right. Washington is good to them-- good, especially, to Frank. Washington likes ambitious and ruthless men, particularly if they are clever enough not to show just how driven they are. And it likes beautiful women, even if Claire isn't always careful enough in concealing her intelligence.

But Claire smokes too many cigarettes and falls in love with someone else; Frank is better at setting fires than he is at putting them out. And power is a hard thing to pursue, slippery and ephemeral, just as righteousness is a hard thing to hold onto in a city founded on lies and impossible dreams.

They could go quietly, gracefully: they could pack their bags and go home to South Carolina. Frank could run for governor, for the state legislature, climb the ranks of the DNC. There are women he could fuck, with soft Southern accents and big tits and big hair. Claire could go to New York, Marfa, L.A, Paris-- anywhere with a cause and a thousand good men.

But neither of them ever does anything easily. The only compromise they ever make is their marriage. And when Washington betrays them, they choose to destroy it. It is such a delicate balance, the cobweb network of alliances and handshakes and betrayals on which the government, on which the world, depends. 

And Frank is so very angry, an anger that has nothing to do with sprawling stone houses overgrown with ivy, green lawns, leatherbound books, the pieces of the life he claims he wants. Frank is gasoline and matches, a box of black garbage bags and a shovel. Frank is generations of good old boys with nice smiles and hard eyes. Frank is tired of playing by the rules.

Claire's always known that playing by the rules is for white men and people with no ambition. Claire's not stupid, and unlike Frank she isn't vicious. In his place she wouldn't make his choices. But Claire is ruthless in ways even Frank wouldn't understand; she is perfectly capable of making his choices for different reasons. She is willing to kill to protect the things she loves.

Frank would say that the world needs soldiers, hunters, killers. Frank has always needed to justify his actions, if only to himself. Claire would give you that smile, beautiful and tired and kind. But in the end they both go down shooting. In the end there is no forgiveness, no gentleness, no resignation in either of them.

Frank Underwood is the kind of man who would break an animal's neck to save himself an inconvenience, and claim it was mercy. Claire is the kind of woman who would take his hand afterward.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Battle Hymn of the Republic (podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8362672) by [Caveat_Lector](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caveat_Lector/pseuds/Caveat_Lector)




End file.
